 Good afternoon. Good evening to everyone. I hope you are all well wherever you are. Before I introduce myself, I would like to let you know that we have interpretation into French for the plenary sessions. On your screen, click the globe icon at the lower part of your Zoom window. You can select a language, English or French. So with that, good afternoon. Welcome to this webinar. It's organized by the Knowledge Management Team within the Landed Scale Program. My name is Witzke Chamberlain. I am the coordinator of this Knowledge Management Team, and I will be moderating the event today. A few logistical notes about the webinar before beginning. The plenary sessions of this webinar are being streamed live on multiple platforms. Please note that live tweeting is occurring for this event from the Lent Portal Twitter account. The hashtag that we are using is hashtag land at scale and also hashtag tenure security. We have created a social media kit for this event, and this will be shared with you in the chat. So keep an eye out on that, please. And if you do have any questions, please post them in the Q&A button at the bottom of your screen, and we will try to answer them later in the webinar. Finally, in the interest of transparency, I should add that today's session is being recorded, and you will receive the link to the video afterwards. We will also produce an article with key messages from this webinar, and that will be posted on the Lent Portal's website later. So having covered that, let's get into it. In the next two hours, we want to revisit the concept of land tenure security with you. Tenure security underlies many land governance interventions, also within the land at scale program. Projects aim to increase tenure security as an objective in itself to provide security to people and communities. But tenure security is also viewed as a contributing factor for downstream objectives such as conflict resolution, economic development, and gender equality. We agree that there is general support for the importance of land tenure security in fostering sustainable and just development. But there's less agreement on what tenure security actually entails or how it can and should be attained. Attempts to promote it are often based on assumption, explicitly, but also implicitly. And this exposes interventions to certain risks that we should try to avoid. So questions that we want to engage on with you during this webinar are, what do we need to know to enhance the effectiveness of our work and limit the risk of unintended effects? What lessons can be learned from available literature? And what approaches may work under which conditions? Proust van Westen, Assistant Professor Human Geography with Utrecht University and also Landach co-chair, will be presenting preliminary findings from a paper that addresses these questions. And this paper was co-authored by Jaap Zeeverbergen, Professor in the Department of Urban and Regional Planning and Geo Information Management with the University of Twente. And this paper focus part of an ongoing learning trajectory on this topic. And this webinar contributes to that journey. After HUS has set the scene, we open five breakout groups where you can actively debate and exchange on how tenure security relates to the following themes. Land and conflict, gender, economic development and the role of the state. Unfortunately, we are unable to offer translation in the breakouts. And instead, we have a French speaking breakout session where you are able to cover some all of these themes. The breakout sessions will be facilitated by someone from the Knowledge Management team who will guide the conversation. They will also have a rapporteur who is a specialist on a specific theme. And this rapporteur will join in the closing panel where we bring back the main insights from the five breakout discussions. We close off the event with a reflection by Jaap Zeeverbergen. But before I give the floor to HUS, a little exercise to get our creative juices flowing. We're going to do a poll here on Zoom where we will present four statements that I would like you to answer with yes or with no. You should see the four statements on your screen now. If you only see one, then just scroll down to see the other statements. The first statement is tenure security is a goal in itself. Tenure security is a goal in itself. Feel free to post your answer to that. The second statement, land registration is a condition for economic development. Land registration is a condition for economic development. Statement number three, we cannot rely on customary land tenures to provide tenure security for all. We cannot rely on customary land tenure to provide tenure security for all. And the last statement, using land as collateral will help small holder farmers. Using land as collateral will help small holder farmers. I see that many of you have started to vote. About 60% of you have already said yes, no. I'll give you another 30 seconds or so to make up your mind and submit your answer. Any last votes to put in, we really appreciate it if you indicate whether you agree or not agree with these four statements. So tenure security is a goal in itself. Land registration is a condition for economic development. We cannot rely on customary land tenure to provide tenure security for all. And using land as collateral will help small holder farmers. I think everybody's done it. I think we can show the result second. Excellent. Thank you very much. We will come back to these statements later on in the webinar where I will share the results with you. But now that we've warmed up, I would like to ask Ruth to present the findings from the land tenure security study. Just a second. You can tell. I am showing the results now. Before I was only us that could see them. So now you can walk people through the results quickly. Okay. So Neil has informed me that the results are available. So tenure security is a goal in itself. 73% of you agrees. 27% has voted no. Fast majority agrees. Land registration is a condition for economic development. 65% yes. 35% no. So once again, a slightly less majority. We cannot rely on customary land tenure to provide tenure security for all. Most of you do not agree with that. They do not agree with the statement. So 57%. And lastly, using land as collateral will help small holder farmers is barely equal. 59% agrees and 41% does not agree. So as said, we will come back to these statements later on in the webinar. And I will now give the floor to Huys van Wester, who will be presenting his study. Not yet. And screen. All right. Thank you so much, Witzke, for your kind introduction. Usually this involves switching to another screen. In this case, we are sharing a computer. So we are literally moving around. Thank you all for joining us and good day to everybody here. And I would like to get rid of this. It obstructs my view there. Yeah. Okay. Thank you. Tenure security revisited. As you know, this is part of the land at scale program, which seeks to improve land governance in some, I think, about 12 countries. This does not mean that our findings and our remarks here are derived from the practices in the land at scale program. Rather, this is based on a literature study that looks at both academic literature as well as literature from different practitioners. Tenure security as already introduced by Witzke is a key concept in all sorts of interventions and policies revolving around land and land management and natural resource management. It is a key concept in interventions for land governance, improving land governance, also in the land at scale projects. And it's also outlined before by Witzke. It is often seen as an objective in its own right, assuming that this is what may underpin people's livelihood security. And at the same time, it is often presented as a condition for the successful attainment of downstream objectives like improving gender equality, food security, conflict management. That's the reason why I introduced the Christmas tree here, not so much in review of the season. But rather, Tenure security is supposed to lead to a Christmas tree of presents or benefits for people. So what today we are going to do with you is here reconsider or consider a bit more in-depth the concept of Tenure security upon the some of the key assumptions that are linked. And this is the influence of the land scale program as an oriented specifically to a number of major themes within the land at scale program. And then try to see what lessons we may derive from this exercise for initiatives and interventions. The first thing that strikes us is that Tenure security is rather rarely defined in documents on land governance and land rights. It is, for instance, had not explained what it entails in the voluntary guidelines on the governance of Tenure. There is, of course, some academic literature about the concept, which basically outlines three main dimensions, so arguably they boiled down to two. One is presenting it as in the first place a legal construct, a legal concept, which may guarantees certainties to people. In itself comes with an assumption, namely that the state, which is the guardian, ultimate guardian, at least of legality, is able and will act as an agent for the enforcement of such such rights. And then the second major dimension is that it is perceived as something that bestows the security certainty to right holders and viewed as such by different stakeholders. Here an important assumption in a lot of policy initiatives is that it will guide behavior of people of stakeholders into a desirable direction. Take, for instance, that land security, Tenure security will increase the amount of investment committed. And then the third one is a de facto, what actually outcomes are resulting from these measures towards defining Tenure security. Practical interventions in pursuit of Tenure security tend to revolve around the formalization of different rights. And that is something that involves two steps, two successive steps, mapping and registration. It is delineating a plot, demarcating it on a map of whatever, what exact plots certain rights pertain to, and the entry of the particular right and the rights holders into a register with legal value with legal status. Often should be mentioned interventions are also accompanied by a range of support services, often awareness raising or capacity building, as is also the case in different landed scale projects. It is striking. Well, first place you take it for granted, I think. But when you take a closer look at this, surprising that very often Tenure security is presented as something binary, as it is something that you have or do not have. Reality in most cases is actually rather more complex. And there is a certain confusion here. We tend to think of Tenure security as defining, fixing the relationship between people and a certain plot of land. But in social reality, it revolves around people to people to land relations. That means that the different power positions in which different people have a position in society will influence the people land relationship. To put it a bit bluntly, if in a certain environment that there is a powerful elite that is very much bent on assuming control over certain parts of land, then they most presumably will manage to gain that control, almost irrespective of the type of guarantees that you have written down in documents. This in reality always weighs around that. And so take note of this more nuanced nature of Tenure security. Further assumptions dealing with this formalization process is that if you want to formalize rights, you should also have in mind for what purpose you pursue Tenure security. And here too, we broadly identify two main objectives underpinning land or Tenure security interventions. The first one here is, and very much part of the landed scale projects, is the wish to protect relatively weak parts of society from the risk of this possession, or actually actually also the wealthier and stronger ones. Yeah, has labeled this passive Tenure security. Alternatively, the second main objective revolves around the creation of a land market in pursuit of economic efficiency. That is the sort of documenting rights to land, and it is hoped to be useful in terms of generating investment. And that is the active Tenure security version, namely it makes land liquid, liquid in the sense of being more able to pass rights on from one whole rights holder to another one that may arguably be more effective in making good use of it. Now, it does not take much to realize that these two main objectives can very well be in conflict with each other. They need not be in conflict, but the conflict is somewhat under the surface. If of course, your project, your efforts, make it more easy to transfer rights from one rights holder to another, and then it is also making it more likely that the weaker parts of society, as for instance, in the case of distressed sales, are more likely to be dispossessed of the lands that they have been using for sometimes generations. In the different landed scale projects, we have mostly observed the passive security one, securing the rights of established populations, but quite often the same projects also mention economic development as a secondary objective. And this may ultimately, in some cases, lead to conflict. Moreover, in the observation of different policies pursued for tenure security, there tends to be a shift from emphasizing the passive to us over time more active tenure security, presumably under pressure of commercial interests. There's also assumptions that mapping and registration in formal systems may actually adequately translate customary rights into statutory equivalents, but a conversion of customary law into especially Western derived notions of property that may very well mean a hollowing out of certain rights, which could mean that some part of the population is losing out in the process. The implications of this consideration of land tenure so far, and means that at the very least, interventions in pursuit of tenure security should carefully define what objective they are supposed to serve and whether or not there is a potential risk of conflict between these objectives. And it's also necessary to consider if or not formalization manages to adequately do justice to the different rights that are present before the intervention that pertains to these lands and that are all held by different people, different groups. Further question is that of how inclusive the involvement is and the intervention. Take just the example of many rural areas in the global south that are characterized by heavy outmigration, people working in cities sometimes for a longer period. They may actually be of the agenda when these interventions take place and this should be carefully considered to what extent which people should be included and which can be left out. One of the downstream objectives and often very important actually in interventions is that of trying to mitigate or overcome or manage conflict. Effected areas are often promoted as priority target areas for tenure security interventions. The assumption then of course is that mapping and registration of rights helps in managing conflict. When looking at the literature experiences and the evidence available, this is why this is possible but can certainly not be taken for granted. There is a question here of the flow of causation. Mapping registration may very well in certain cases help to prevent conflict. This depends also on whether or not implementation agencies are effective in handling it. But there are certainly as many cases that show that actually launching a large-scale land registration drive in certain areas triggers open conflict where there have been some submerged differences of rights and different views before they did not exactly escalate into conflict as yet. This is more likely when there is a more heterogeneous population. So at the very least this requires a thorough priority risk, a priority risk assessment before you enter into an activity. A second objective or downstream objective often also very central and pretty much mainstreamed and taken up in all land scale projects is that of working towards gender equality or a bit more broadly working to protect the weak. I already mentioned that it is one of the two main objectives encountered. This for bearing full fruits depends on actually also being able to change practices like inheritance rights on the ground. So it's not just a matter of registration of rights. If this is not actually also affecting the way land is distributed which is not necessarily the same as mapping registration then registration may just entrench existing inequalities. And that is also a risk when formalizing customary practices. Customary systems are in most cases not gender neutral so formalizing them may actually entrench existing gender inequalities. Economic development a major objective and as we have seen potentially in conflict with the protection of the weak objective. Investment areas concentration areas of new investment are also often designated as priority areas or for tenure security initiatives. Higgins and others have done a very extensive empirical study on experiences and evidence with this. And this found interesting but also a bit difficult to interpret results. One is that there is broad support that yes there are positive effects of the registration on productive investment. This is in a rural context and also in the quality of environmental management. But there was not evidence of a clear impact on productivity increase or even access to credit which is supposed to be one of the venues towards pathways towards improved economic performance. And also on income the evidence is very mixed. This is a bit puzzling and one thing that it may very well highlight is that yes tenure security may be an important component but for most of these objectives it can only be helpful and result in positive outcomes only when other measures are also taken. It's in that case only one among a range of necessary conditions. So in terms of these downstream objectives we see that actually more important perhaps than tenure security as such is the reduction of insecurity that may be seen as a necessary step but not as a sufficient step for realizing secondary objectives. And this implies that if that is a serious objective of your policies and then further measures are necessary to also realize these. The states are just limited to one short remark. The state is often seen as the key agent in improving tenure security. It is of course the agency responsible for maintaining legal order just one note that at the same time states are very much inclined to highlight the importance of economic growth. This pressures the experience and this objective is actually risks had to be in conflict with the more protective drive of tenure security. So finally then wrapping up what do we need to know. Interventions should be specific about their objectives. I already mentioned this point. It is very important to be aware of the assumptions that are supposed to support the initiatives and the realization of their objectives. The ones that are in theories of change as well as the implicit ones that may not even be recognized as such. I think it's also necessary to have a continuous assessment of whether or not the assumptions continue to apply throughout the period of the intervention and of course there should be a careful considerations on how you can steer activities projects in the right direction in the case that these assumptions do not seem to apply. And with this I well thank you for your attention and move back to what is it you? Thank you Huse and also Jaap who has co-authored this report that we wanted to share with you. You've illustrated very well the complexity of the subject in terms of specific perspectives, objectives and contexts at play. We are now shifting to our breakout sessions via the lobby and in these breakout sessions we address these contextual aspects and perspectives. So we are using a new Zoom events system. Each of the breakout sessions are just are set up as parallel sessions. I understand that just now you will go back to the lobby and from there you can choose one of the five sessions that we have set up. The first one is on land and conflict with Marco Langhorst which is facilitated by Gemma van der Haar. The second breakout session is on gender with Frida Gitucu which is facilitated by Monica Lengoy Boni. The third session is on economic development with Lorenzo Cotula and facilitated by Gerard Palteson. Number four is the role of the state with Rick de Sattre and facilitated by Kei Otsuki and we have a French breakout session with Mohammed Abdullae Maloum which is facilitated by Barbara Codespoti. So I understand that this particular session will now be closed. You will be taking back to the lobby automatically and from there you can select the breakout session of your choice and they will go for 45 minutes after which we come back to the second plenary panel. Thank you very much.